Exhibition > Present > Haus Gallery

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Haus Gallery 15.03.2023-02.04.2023

HAUS GALLERY CONTINUES WITH THE EXHIBITION SERIES - COLLECTORS

EXTRAVAGANZA: ART FROM JOSE COROMINASE'S PRIVATE COLLECTION - CONTEMPORARY ART CLASSICS

For the most part, art collectors are individuals who remain in the shadows of art and do not want to reveal themselves. However, there are also philanthropists who are more generous in promoting art, organising exhibition series from their own collection, or creating private museums that attract the attention of the audience and also bring their own personality into the public interest.

As a result, several of the world’s best-known art museums have received significant additions, or even basic collections, from the initiative of such private collections, such as the Tate and British Museum in London. There is also the London National Gallery’s core collection, which belonged to banker John Julius Angerstein, not to mention the colourful and iconic Peggy Guggenheim, whose art collecting and passionate commitment to art began in the 1920s and continued to grow in influence for decades afterwards.

Regardless of the greater or lesser fame of the collectors, their persona plays a crucial role in the collection of art, shaping the story and the face of the collection, which alternates between personal and emotional accents, as well as a broader artistic one. Whether the collections are smaller and more intimate or grandiose, they speak of the importance of the role of art, of the need to make deeper sense of the social phenomena, emotions, and expressions of life around us. To perceive certain energy oscillations that a work of art incorporates, enriching everyday spaces of thought just as a conversation with a meaningful companion who seems to know something beyond words.

The art collection of Spaniard Jose Corominas is voluminous, while also rather intimate, and is mostly chosen impulsively and based on the sense of mood rather than calculating. He is certainly not a collector who would be willing to trade or sell the works in his collection. Art is an inseparable companion for him. On top of all this, Jose’s own great passion is painting, creating colourful and spontaneous works with a collage element in which his own character is just as colourful. Extravagant and outstanding, this real estate businessman can be spotted in the center of Tallinn, where he always moves in an elegant light suit, wearing flamboyant shirts, a tie adorned with a gold brooch, and a light coat, even in the coldest weather, and never a hat or umbrella.

Jose, who comes from a renowned Barcelona family, has collected Estonian art for almost 20 years, starting when he moved from Helsinki to Tallinn. Today, the works of Estonian modern art classics constitute an important core in the collection of this real estate businessman.

The restrained emotionality of Jose Corominas and his search for personal contact with Estonian art have led him to interact with artists and visit studios, galleries, and auctions. He is a permanent and long-term client of the Haus Gallery, whose collection today includes an outstanding selection of extraordinary works by our well-known authors – artists whose works have also been sought and appreciated by the wider circle of art collectors at the auctions of the modern art classics of the Haus Gallery, of which the spring auction of 2023 will soon take place again.

The exhibition of the private collection of Jose Corominas at Haus Gallery presents a few dozen works, at the heart of which is the large-format hexagonal figural composition One Road (1983), by Peeter Mudist, as well as rare early works by Jüri Arrak, such as The Bathers (1971) and The Kite (1973), and a nude on a yellow background by Enn Põldroos, painted in a populist key almost a decade later. Intriguingly juxtaposed in the exhibition are views of Paris by Rein Tammik and Evald Okas, with the former having lived in France for many years, acting as a freelance artist there. However, the material art from the world travels of Professor Emeritus Evald Okas is a separate chapter in his oeuvre. Jose has collected the works of Nikolai Kormašov, of which he has several, with particular affection. Two works can be seen in the exhibition, of which The Epiphany (1990) brings together, in a seemingly simple farm motif, a historical character set of European religion. The exhibition also includes works by Henn Roode, Olav Maran, and Raivo Korstnik.

The exhibition of the private collection of Jose Corominas offers the viewer a unique and certainly intriguing opportunity to consciously look at two essentially and intimately related elements of the art landscape together, both the collector and his art collection, where the brave choices of content and motifs of the paintings also speak of their owner, in this case a non-Estonian, and his respectful interest in Estonian art. The exhibition also invites curiosity in a good way, juxtaposing a collector and his collection, reading his thoughts and his world through the brilliant fineness of Estonian modern art.

Exhibition curator: Piia Ausman

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